Ivy Coach College Admissions Blog

What do you think about this college ranking that puts MIT in first position? By the way, where’s Caltech in this ranking? Princeton? (Photo credit: Canon vs. Nixon).

There’s a college ranking that came out recently and this one hails from Dr. Daniel A. Sternberg, Ph.D. and Lumosity. We’ve reported on the ranking of the smartest college students before but we figured you’d find this latest college ranking intriguing to say the least. Feeling that the typical college rankings rely way too heavily on test results and non-cognitive metrics, Sternberg and his team set out to measure things differently. Very differently!

According to a “Forbes” piece on the smartest college students, “The youthful Sternberg and his Lumos Labs compadres — using ‘self-reported email addresses and/or the web domain associated with’ a student’s ‘IP address’ — selected out the scores of 60,000 students at 411 colleges and universities on a series of Lumosity ‘cognitive training games.’ These games measured intelligence in the ‘Five Lumosity Brain Areas: Speed, Attention, Flexibility, Memory, and Problem-Solving.'”

So which university ranks first with the smartest students, you ask? The answer is…the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following MIT are: Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, Yale, Wash U, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (really?), Duke, College of William and Mary, Penn, University of Portland, University of California – Berkeley, Vanderbilt, University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Macalester, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, University of California – Los Angeles, Emory, Lafayette, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Case Western Reserve University, and Boston College rounds out the top twenty-five.

1 Comment

Just plain stupidity! Those are just students who registered on Luminosity and did the cognitive tests. If you don’t go to those colleges you’re not smart? Of course not! And there are kids at Duke, Dartmouth, Wash U just to name a few, who are not smart at all. Some were just plain drunk through high school, filthy loaded (their parents were high contributors in private schools, and sent in their million dollar plus donations to get their dopey, stoned out (hate to say it, but it’s a fact that I know to be true) kids in, while kids who actually work hard Are rejected. Boston college took so many legacies this year, and these kids were not the brightest bulbs in the drawer. And Princeton? They will take athletes who smoke hookah pipes, deal adderall and make a fake IDs, just because they play a sport that “might” qualify them for the Olympics; minorities who are under qualified but are pushed to succeed because they are in private school; and singers in madrigal groups (not bright either). No one respects Princeton’s acceptances…look at the alumnus who made the ridiculous statement about how women will never meet men of this caliber anywhere else, so they should look for their future spouses there! But that is the game of college, and if people think they are going to gain entry the “old” way (hard work), they will be woefully disappointed. Let’s not forget all the “resume padding,” and the outrageously overpaid heads of private schools who select their favorite students (based on high contributing parents and the token minorities they need to get into top schools!)….also, places like Yale need to re-evaluate the alumni they send out to interview students (one interviewer this year was so old he got lost coming to the meeting place he chose, forgot his questions, had no clue what to ask, bolted out so he could get to the senior center for dinner, and prided himself with never wanting to travel, explore other cultures and just about declared himself a racist)..,,no surprise Yale wasn’t on the list! And why make fun of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology? Again, believe it or not, there ARE students at schools all over this country who are bright and dedicated and will succeed in life, and those that go to top schools who may not. A top name school does not guarantee future success…motivation, confidence, honesty and hard work does!